In his lifetime Boris Vakhtin (1930-1981), son of thewriter Vera Panora, was known in the USSR mainly to an inner circle of writers and literary people in Leningrad. By profession a sinologist and translator of Chinese literature, he was also a member of an unofficial group of writers called “Urbanites” and a great defender of a free Russian literature during a period of oppression. His career as a writer was not untypical for Soviet literature of the 1960s and 70s – he wrote a lot but was unable to be published except in the underground press where his work circulated widely.